The Best Station of Them All

The Best Station of Them All is the story of the Confederate navy&rsquo;s Savannah Squadron, its relationship with the people of Savannah, Georgia, and its role in the city&rsquo;s economy.

In this well-written and extensively researched narrative, Maurice Melton charts the history of the unit, the sailors (both white and black), the officers, their families, and their activities aboard ship and in port.

The Savannah Squadron worked, patrolled, and fought in the rivers and sounds along the Georgia coast. Though they saw little activity at sea, the unit did engage in naval assault, boarding, capture, and ironclad combat. The sailors finished the war as an infantry unit in Robert E. Lee&rsquo;s Army of Northern Virginia, fighting at Sayler&rsquo;s Creek on the road to Appomattox.

Melton concentrates on navy life and the squadron&rsquo;s place in wartime Savannah. The book reveals who the Confederate sailors were and what their material, social, and working lives were like.

The Best Station of Them All is an essential piece of historical literature for anyone interested in the Civil War, its navies, or Savannah.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

This is Bob Holcombe’s book. For more years than I’m willing to admit, whenever
we met, Bob would ask: “How’s the Savannah Squadron coming?” Never with exasperation
at the lack of progress but with interest and enthusiasm, and sympathy
for a fellow writer burdened with real-world
responsibilities that devoured research...

1. The Georgia Navy

All eyes were on Charleston. South Carolina’s efforts to negotiate with the new
Republican administration had been rebuffed. There was no agreement on formerly
shared property—like the newly built Fort Sumter in Charleston’s outer
harbor.
The U.S. Army had occupied it, moving there in the dead of night from...

2. Tattnall: The Legend Comes Home

In February seven seceded states sent representatives to Montgomery, Alabama, to
bring the long anticipated Southern
Confederacy into being. The transition
period
left Georgia’s armed forces in limbo. Henry Wayne wrote Commander
Morris
that naval matters now depended “upon the whim of the Provisional
Government”—...

3. The Georgia Coast Guard

On the first Sunday in March, Commanders Morris and Kell, in their navy dress
blues with new state brass, attended service at Christ Episcopal Church, with Bishop
Stephen Elliott in the pulpit. The church was old Savannah’s social as well as spiritual
center. This Sunday it was bright with the uniforms of the city’s military elite—...

4. “Old Abes Blockade Is No Good in This Section”

Lincoln’s call for volunteers to invade the South forced the last Southern
army and
navy officers to search their hearts, make a decision, and seal their fate, one way
or another. They wrestled with their conscience, caught up in the crosscurrents of
duty and family and allegiance....

5. “All We Want Is to Be Let Alone”

John Maffitt didn’t like the Savannah. He denigrated her to everyone who would
listen. She was a fraud, he said, a frail little passenger steamer gussied up with a few
guns and called a warship. He thought Tattnall’s entire flotilla a perfect example of
Stephen Mallory’s chuckle-headed
incompetence.1 Maffitt was full of grand ideas:...

6. Sailors

As Bulloch, Huse, and Anderson adventured overseas, Josiah Tattnall was trying
to build a squadron. He was a good man for the job—famously courageous, a
disciple of discipline, and a gifted teacher who protected and guided his young
officers with fatherly concern. And they thought the world of him. To John Kell,...

7. The Bermuda Shows the Way

Henry Decie spent the summer ferrying Confederates between England and the
Continent. To divert attention from those missions he kept a high profile challenging
British yachts to races. At the end of August he sailed for the Confederacy. Fearing
the blockade off Savannah, he made port at Jacksonville, Florida, and left the...

8. A Future Navy

When the Mosquito Fleet acquired the Firefly, Tattnall gave her to Lieutenant
Oscar Johnston. She broke down on her trial run. Tattnall cautioned Johnston to
be frugal in repairing her and offered the Savannah’s carpenter, Robert Bain, to
oversee repairs. But the primary problems
were with the machinery, and the little...

9. Port Royal

While the South celebrated its first victories at Big Bethel and Manassas and basked
in the glow of independence, hard men in the North planned retribution. And the
U.S. Navy was building its strength. Frigates and sloops of war hurried home from
foreign stations, and construction and purchasing added scores of new vessels....

10. Enter the Fingal

Now that Bulloch had his first ship contracts (and understood something of the
tactics and political
resources of the U.S. ambassador, Charles Francis Adams), the
need for a quick return to the Confederacy for consultation and a reconsideration
of his instructions seemed imperative. And he had a major arms shipment to bring...

11. “Happy Hearts and Happy Homes Are Now No More”: The Battle for Port Royal

While the Fingal awaited her turn at the coaling wharf in St. George’s, Captain
Du Pont’s scattered fleet began to regroup off the Carolina coast. The weather
subsided and one by one the ships topped the horizon, altered course, and joined
in the flagship’s wake. When the C.S.S. Savannah arrived in Port Royal Sound,...

12. Bringing the Fingal Home

Makin wanted to run for Port Royal. Bulloch and Anderson decided not; it would
be Savannah as planned. Bulloch wanted to get the Fingal inside the blockaders
and hug the shore as closely as he dared. Major Anderson understood the
strategy: “My naval education had taught me that of all things most dreaded by...

13. The Fingal, Tattnall, and Robert E. Lee

The Georgia-Carolina coast had been without a military commander since Beauregard’s
departure for Virginia six months earlier. Du Pont’s threat brought the
region back to the government’s attention. The War Department created the Military
District of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida, and gave Major General...

14. The Enemy Outside

The new year opened with four blockaders off Tybee Bar. Down in Wassaw around
Romerly Marsh were two gunboats and a large steamer, and one of the gunboats
was snooping up Wilmington River again.1 There were also three old hulks—part of the Great Stone Fleet of derelict whalers and merchantmen intended to...

15. Lee Goes, and Tattnall Follows

The administration ordered General Lee back to Richmond.2 As he left Coosawhatchie,
Federal gunboats were pushing up the Savannah River, probing the
woods with their guns. Tattnall’s officers gathered atop their pilothouses in the
downpour, watching the enemy as they fired. A Union patrol on Whitemarsh Island...

16. The Ladies’ Ironclad Gunboat

Over the same weekend that Mallory ordered Tattnall to Virginia, John Stoddard
of the Ladies’ Ironclad Gunboat steering committee asked Georgia Militia general
Henry Rootes Jackson to build their ironclad. Some of Jackson’s state troops were
already building small boats for the army at Harding’s Shipyard near Alvin Miller’s...

17. Pulaski Goes Up

The first day of April was pleasant enough, sunny and warm with a brisk wind
blowing. But the next night the wind died and swarms of mosquitos appeared. The
weather turned “miserably hot,” and clouds of mosquitos and sand flies assaulted
everyone.1...

18. The Lull

New Orleans, where the brothers Tift were building their ironclad, was under
siege. Down the Mississippi, David Farragut’s and David Dixon Porter’s squadrons
were pounding Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Captain William B. Robertson,
commanding Fort Jackson’s water battery, described the bombardment at night:...

19. Ironclads for Savannah

Up the river, hidden away at Purrysburg, the brothers Tift were working on the
Fingal. They began buying tools—carpenters squares and rules, wedges, chisels,
augers and bits, several big grind stones, carpenters’ hammers and sledge hammers
and caulking mallets and spare handles for them all, caulking irons, rip saws and...

20. The Interim

The Savannah Squadron suffered through the summer. Dysentery was rampant. So
were “rice field dropsies” and “intermittent river fever,” which often
evolved into
dangerous, and lingering, pulmonary problems.
In late August the city received a
fright when Dr. T. B. Ford diagnosed a case of smallpox aboard the...

21. “The Poetry of the Profession Is Gone”

The Atlanta’s captain would be Commander William McBlair, a bluff, hearty veteran
of the quarterdeck with silver hair, a lantern jaw, and a ready smile. Now fifty-five,
McBlair had ridden out the slave patrols and routine postings of the Old Navy
alongside Farragut, Buchanan, Tattnall, and others whose stars had ascended, while...

22. Training and Trials

On December
5 all hands aboard the Atlanta were roused at four forty-five
to greet a
cold, black morning and a rising wind. Below, firemen stoked the furnaces. While
the boiler heated, the crew weighed the stern anchors then went to breakfast. At
8:00 a.m. sailors invaded the junior officers’ quarters to raise the bow anchors...

23. Christmas, 1862

Two days before Christmas Dabney Scales went to town to shop for his mess.
It was warm for December,
the temperature in the low sixties.2 Scales dined with
William Van Comstock (now first luff aboard Pelot’s flag boat Savannah), then enjoyed
an evening with friends who introduced him to several young ladies. Around...

24. The Promise of Ironclads

The Yankees were gathering at Port Royal. Their fleet was crowding the harbor,
no
doubt preparing for an assault on Charleston or Savannah. This would be a perfect
time for the Atlanta to strike. That was the kind of defense Tattnall relished—and
Savannah wanted. The Atlanta’s crew was green and the ship not shaken down,...

25. The Revolving Door

A year to the day after orders carried him away from Savannah, Commander
Richard Page’s path brought him back. After the battle of Port Royal he had been
posted to the great naval manufacturing and repair facility at Gosport Navy Yard.
When Norfolk was lost he salvaged most of the yard’s heavy equipment and built...

26. “With a Few Blows Crushed Out All Hope”

William A. Webb knew as much about fighting monitors as anyone in the Confederacy.
As captain of the Teaser he’d been present at the dawn of armored combat,
watching ringside as the Monitor and Virginia slugged it out. During Tattnall’s
tenure in Hampton Roads he’d trained a team to board and capture the Yankee....

27. The Aftermath

Joel Kennard gave the department a thorough report of the Atlanta disaster. He
stated the time the Atlanta opened the action—five minutes until five—and laid
out Webb’s plan of battle: torpedo one monitor, then shoot it out with the other.
He described the ironclad getting aground, afloat, then aground again, and the...

28. Prisoners

Fort Warren, on George’s Island at the outer reaches of the harbor,
was the
country club of prisoner camps. Early in the war it housed political
prisoners from
Maryland and Kentucky, resigning U.S. officers who refused to take an additional
oath of allegiance, and Confederate officers and enlisted men captured at Cape

29. Fall, 1863

Autumn in Savannah was marvelous. People working indoors longed to be out,
and families lingered on porches in the early evening. At naval headquarters, Captain
Hunter may have barely noticed the weather. He was trying to run a squadron
so depleted by transfers it could barely function. Hunter and Tattnall had both...

30. The Great Christmas Riot

On the second Sunday in November
the first hint of winter arrived, the wind
blowing hard and cold from the northeast. Four sailors from the Savannah chose
that night to desert. About ten o’clock Bosun’s Mate Martin hurried aboard and
told the officer of the deck that several women in town had heard some of his...

32. In the Doldrums

For the officers at Fort Warren, the departure of Doctors Freeman and Gibbes
deepened their despair. Early in their captivity a promise had come from Confederate
commissioner of exchanges Robert Ould that at the first opportunity he
would get them exchanged. They heard they would be exchanged for the...

33. The Florida Boys

Wednesday, February 25, 1864, dawned foggy and cold, and it stayed cold all
day. The Federals began feeling the army’s front at dawn. The skirmishers held
their ground, trading fire with Union infantry all morning and well into the afternoon.
The Yanks brought up field batteries and began raking them with canister....

34. Blockaded

When old John Boston died, the Savannah Republican editor, James Sneed, succeeded
him, both as collector of customs and head of the Confederate States Depository.
To keep the books Sneed hired Charles Hardee, who counted among
his uncles both Savannah cotton merchant Noble Hardee and General William J....

35. The Water Witch

Since the monitor assaults on Fort McAllister, a lone gunboat had been keeping
the blockade in Ossabaw Sound. The Cimarron, Sonoma, and Fernandina had
each marked time there, but by the spring of 1864 a little side-wheeler
called the
Water Witch was holding the sound. Built in 1852, she’d seen her share of gunboat...

36. After the Capture

The wounded arrived at the Liberty Street Naval Hospital at dusk. There were fifteen
injured Yanks, seven of them officers and two petty officers, “wounded, with a few
exceptions, in the head, with sabres,” reported the Savannah Republican. Assistant
Paymaster Billings described the hospital as “a most commodious dwelling which...

37. Securing the Prize

The Yankees already knew they’d lost her. Around nine thirty Friday morning,
as the Rebels were trying to get the Water Witch into the Vernon, the blockader
Fernandina saw a man signaling furiously from Ossabaw Island. It was Peter McIntosh,
the black sailor who had slipped overboard and escaped.1 When the...

38. The Newlyweds

The ranking Chattahoochee officer in the new Savannah contingent was Lieutenant
George W. Gift. He expected to soon command the Water Witch. A Tennessee
veteran of the Old Navy, Gift was gregarious and confident (overly so, many
thought), a man of big ideas, and a big talker who too often
confounded his critics...

39. Waiting

In late July the Savannah lost three of her black crewmen. Attorney D. A. Byrne
wrote Commodore Hunter on behalf of William P. Ryan, who sought to recover
his slaves Edward, William, and Charles. Byrne said Ryan “has never given his
consent for these boys to enlist in the Navy—nor has he permitted any agent for...

40. John Thomas Scharf, Midshipman

There, in the war zone, the midshipmen were often
called from the Patrick
Henry’s
classrooms to help man batteries ashore and fight the Yanks. Professors
used these assignments to reward the best students, and Scharf was frequently
among those sent ashore to fight. At the end of January 1864, he volunteered for...

41. Savannah Feels the Pressure

Sixteen months after being ordered overseas, Robert C. Foute returned to the
Confederacy.
While in Paris, Foute had been promoted to lieutenant. And there
he had fallen in love. Life could be good for a Confederate naval officer in Europe.
But at home, the country was fighting for its life. So he volunteered for assignment...

42. Savannah Goes Up: The Squadron Shattered

On December
8, John Tattnall’s marines were called into the trenches. They left
Fairfield in a driving rain and marched to King’s Bridge on the Ogeechee, just
above the Savannah & Gulf Railroad bridge. There they dug in, wet and chilled
to the bone. Assistant Surgeon Marcellus Ford went along to look after them....

43. Wilmington

Off Wilmington, North Carolina, Admiral David Dixon Porter and Major General
Benjamin Butler had Fort Fisher under siege. Wilmington and its flow of supplies
were vital to the Army of Northern
Virginia. General Lee wrote Major General
W. H. C. Whiting that Wilmington must be held. Chase Whiting replied: “Stripped...

44. Augusta

The Macon, three years abuilding and less than a year in service, was rotten; so
rotten that sailors could pull chunks of wood from her planks—even her timbers—
with their bare hands. So rotten that the action of her engines had hogged her
nearly eighteen inches. And she arrived at Augusta crippled. Above Shell Bluff she...

45. Richmond, the “Aye, Ayes,” and Sayler’s Creek

The Wilmington and Savannah sailors reached Richmond just before midnight
on February 27. They formed up at the car shed and marched two miles through
the city. When it started to rain the column halted. The officers sought shelter,
leaving the men in formation in the rain. They stood it for half an hour, then...

46. The End

In Savannah the Federals expelled the families of all Confederate officers. The
sorrowful group—reported to be a hundred in number—made their way to Sister’s
Ferry. General Fry asked Hunter to send the steamer Leesburg to rescue them.
Hunter gave the job to Joel Kennard. Then Fry added another duty. Major General...

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